Reading-challenged fourth formers' perspectives on schooling

This study sought to reveal the perspectives on schooling of two fourth-form students who read below their chronological age and who were enrolled in a senior comprehensive school on the "East-West Corridor" in Trinidad and Tobago. It attempts to identify the strategies employed by these students to cope with the curriculum, their affective responses to schooling, and the extent to which they perceived their special educational needs to be catered for in the then existing senior comprehensive school system. The data revealed that the participants experienced some negative affective responses to schooling. Aware of their relative incompetence as readers and their self-perceived disadvantage relative to their peers, they felt anger and embarrassment and sought to avoid reading tasks. However, the two participants also displayed some positive affect towards schooling. While not being highly efficacious students, they displayed some of the behaviours consonant with efficacious students